Title

Author

Preview

Creation Date

Spring 2015

Major

Psychology

Department

Psychology

Degree

Undergraduate

Mentor

Richard Osbaldiston

Mentor Department

Psychology

Abstract

Globally, there are over one million violent crimes committed every day. Criminality has been linked with, or is the result of, mental disorders in many cases, and psychopathy is thought to be related to criminal behavior. We sought out to answer the research question “Does psychopathy influence criminal behavior?” We meta-analyzed a total of 20 empirical articles to examine the relationships between psychopathy and criminal behavior. The overall effect size was r = 0.24. This relationship was moderated disease comorbidity. Individuals who were disease comorbid (r = 0.32) showed a stronger effect than individuals who were not comorbid (r = 0.22). Counter to our hypotheses, age of participants did not affect the relationship between criminal behavior and psychopathy. Adolescent participants effect size was r = 0.24 and adult participants effect size was r = 0.25.